The invention relates to a method of fabricating a turbine engine blade made of composite material.
In turbine engines, it is known to make use of moving blades that are made of metal. It is desirable to replace such metal blades with blades made of a composite material in order to reduce the weight of such engines. Such replacement is particularly advantageous in that certain composite materials, such as ceramic matrix composite materials, are compatible with exposure to higher operating temperatures, thus enabling the performance of the engine to be improved.
At present, blades made of metal can be made by a casting method in which the top surface (head) and the bottom surface (platform) are cast at the same time as the airfoil and the root of the blade.
The inventors have sought to replace a metal material blade with a composite material blade presenting fiber reinforcement formed as a single part by weaving. Nevertheless, making a blade presenting all of the required secondary functions from a single textile preform presents a certain number of problems, in particular because of the difficulties encountered for making and shaping the textile preform.
Also known are Document WO 2012/001279, which describes a blade having an incorporated composite spar, and Document WO 2014/076408, which describes a fiber preform for a turbine engine blade obtained by a single piece of three-dimensional weaving.
There therefore exists a need to have novel methods enabling a turbine engine blade to be fabricated in simple manner out of composite material and presenting the desired properties.